


Adrift

by romanticalgirl



Category: Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-12-04 22:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Memory Bliss</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adrift

There are a variety of churches that Sebastian avoids as they tour through Venice, and an equal number of museums and statues. Instead, he lays in the gondola with the bottle of wine and stares at me with eyes that see far too much and too little all the same.

“What are you smiling about?”

“You.” He presses his bare foot against mine and lets his eyes drift closed. “Sitting so very far away, studying me as if I were something carved in stone.”

“No, you’re no sculpture, Sebastian.”

“Oh?” He takes a sip and passes the bottle over, his lips red from the wine before he licks them clean. “What then? A painting? Will you sketch and paint me, Charles? Immortalize me?”

“No. Not paint. Better though. Sculpture is too static for you, paint flows, but…no.” I take a drink and ponder the thought as we drift along the canals, pants rolled to our knees and vests unbuttoned and opened, ties loose around our necks and straw hats perched jauntily on our heads. Sebastian is bathed in sunlight with his head back and lips parted on a smile. He’s like a sacrifice to Dionysius or Hyacinth offered up to Apollo. “Collage, I think.”

“Collage?” He murmurs, his voice as sun-drenched as the rest of us. “Bits and pieces of things scattered here and there?”

“Not scattered,” I explain, shifting my position in the small boat to lie above him, stare down into those deep blue eyes. “Arranged in such a way that even those things that don’t make sense, those things that seem so contrary are perfectly aligned.” I kiss him softly, tasting wine and warmth, Sebastian’s tongue stroking mine. “A kaleidoscope of colors and textures. Soft and hard, dark and light.” I kiss him again, wondering as I do each time, how I ever managed to stop.

Sebastian laughs against my mouth, and shakes his head, kissing me again. “You see more in me than there is, Charles.”

“I see everything in you, Sebastian.”

His grin is wicked and promising and heat pools in my groin and I know better than anything else that we are not long for this gondola. “Can you see yourself in me?”

“Yes,” I breathe against his mouth and then pull away, urging the gondolier toward the shore. There is privacy somewhere, though if we do not find it, Sebastian will find another way to fulfill my promise, lost in the dark and narrow alleyways of Venice.

I shiver with desire and want, with anticipation and try hard not to think how much I hope that privacy will elude us.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 9-4-06


End file.
